IrishIllustrated.com - Lessons learned in first exhibition

November 2, 2009

Jake Brown
IrishIllustrated.com Recruiting Analyst

Chalk up the Notre Dame basketball team's first exhibition game as a 40-minute teaching tool.

Playing Sunday night against Lewis University, a Division-II school out of Romeoville, Ill., the Irish trailed in the second half before grinding out a 70-54 win in their first action at the renovated Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center.

Forward Luke Harangody led all scorers with 33 points and added nine rebounds but only one other Notre Dame player reached double digits.

With some players taking on more significant roles and guard Ben Hansbrough, who scored 12 points, playing his first game since transferring to Notre Dame, the offense lacked its trademark continuity of the last few seasons.

"The group we had last year had been kind of together for three solid years," Harangody said. "This group needs to learn how to play together a little bit. It took awhile but we got into a groove in the second half a little bit. We missed a lot of easy shots too."

Notre Dame scored the first eight points of the game before Lewis bounced back to square the game at 10-10.

By the 3:43 mark of the first half, the Irish stretched their lead out to 32-16 after two free throws by Tim Abromaitis. But by the end of the first half, Lewis had scored nine straight points to cut it to 32-25.

Lewis took little bits out of the margin in the opening minutes of the second half until it took a 41-40 lead with 14:45 left in the game.

It wasn't until later in the half that Notre Dame began to assert itself on defense.

"We probably can be a little better defensively," Irish coach Mike Brey said. "Those three guards (Tory Jackson, Jonathan Peoples and Hansbrough) are pretty good at staying in front of people. I would've loved to look at our zone a little bit when we substitute and get bigger. But the way they were shooting the basketball I never felt like we could play with zone."

Notre Dame retook the lead at 46-44 with 12:42 left and never gave it back.

Forward Ty Nash, who had just six points on four shot attempts in 25 minutes, made it 58-50 on a jumper with 5:50 left before Hansbrough put the exclamation point on the game minutes later with a dunk in transition to make it 68-54 with 1:31 left.

Although the game was closer than expected, Jackson saw it as a good pre-season lesson.

"It was the first game," Jackson said. "We should have played a little bit better than what we did but all in all I think we did well. The run that they made made us come together defensively. That's what we gotta be all year."

Notre Dame concludes its exhibition slate at 7:30 p.m. Friday at home against Quincy University.

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